get_iplayer – Download BBC iplayer, BBC Radio & ITV programmes

get_iplayer – Download BBC iplayer, BBC Radio & ITV programmes

get_iplayer is yet another cool command line tool to download or stream any iPlayer programme from the BBC in H.264 (Quicktime/mp4) format, any BBC radio programmes in MP3 or RealAudio format (optionally converted to wav or mp3) and all BBC podcasts in MP3/AAC format. The H.264 feeds from the BBC are higher quality than in the Flash iPlayer (normal quality) or the Wii. It even downloads the BBC subtitles where available and has support for downloading ITV TV programmes.

get_iplayer, does the downloading, indexing and searching of the iPlayer TV/Radio/ITVplayer programmes and podcasts available. It can even stream the iPlayer TV programmes while downloading them to mplayer or xine, etc. It does not circumvent any digital rights management security.

Stream iPlayer or podcast content via mplayer or xine while downloading it

Allow multiple programmes to be downloaded in one command

Indexing of all available (i.e. listed) podcasts and BBC/ITV Radio/TV programs

Script update capability

Caching of Programme Indices

Creation of basic html and xml index files

HTTP Proxy support

Search on programme name, episode, description, channel or category

Limit search by programmes made available after a specific number of hours

Meta-tagging of downloaded iPlayer iPhone/H.264 files for importing into iTunes

Install get_iplayer

Click this 1-click installer from packman which supports openSUSE 11.1/11.0/10.3/10.2. This should download the YMP file and automatically launch the YaST package manager to add the required Repositories and download and install get_iplayer and the required dependencies. Click next on the get_iplayer installation screen and Next again on the installation proposal window. This should start adding the required repositories, download and install get_iplayer and its required dependencies. Click Finish when the installation completes successfully.

NOTE: Click here for a how to on enabling 1-click install in openSUSE 10.2

This should install get_iplayer under /usr/bin/get_iplayer

saihari@opensuse11:~> which get_iplayer
/usr/bin/get_iplayer

get_iplayer defaults to searching for BBC TV indexes. For instance, simply run get_iplayer from the terminal window to search TV index feeds from BBC.

The get_iplayer refreshes its programme cache every 4 hours, but you can flush the cache as follows:

saihari@opensuse11:~> get_iplayer –flush

To update to a newer version of get_iplayer,

opensuse11:~ # get_iplayer –update
INFO: Current version is 1.17
INFO: Checking for latest version from linuxcentre.net
INFO: New version 1.19 available, downloading
INFO: Copied new version 1.19 into place (previous version is now called ‘/usr/bin/get_iplayer.old’)
INFO: Please see: http://linuxcentre.net/get_iplayer/CHANGELOG.txt

There are more download and streaming options, click here for the authors documentation.

Very well written post. If you are looking to listen to BBC Radio on the iPhone – I strongly recommend BBC Streams – it is easily the most convenient way to listen to BBC Radio on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and it’s free at BBCStreams.com.